With the recent enhancement of awareness of environmental problems, a lot of efforts are being made to reduce the fuel consumption of vehicles such as motorcars, construction machines and dump trucks (e.g., mining dump trucks).
Technologies of this kind include, for example, applications (application programs) for providing a service of searching for a route that minimizes the fuel consumption. For example, JP-2011-53162-A discloses a car navigation system for presenting the driver with a travel route that minimizes the fuel consumption based on geographical features, traffic information, vehicle weight, and energy consumption characteristics of the engine/motor.
As a technology adopting a different approach, there exists a system which constantly monitors the fuel consumption of a vehicle and provides the driver with guidance to reduce the fuel consumption. For example, JP-10-76864-A discloses a vehicle operation management device which monitors the fuel consumption calculated during the traveling of the vehicle and issues an abnormality alarm when the fuel consumption reaches an alarm level.
Further, there has been disclosed an operation support device for a diesel-electric truck, comprising: a course information database storing course information on a course on which the truck travels; a vehicle body information database storing vehicle body information on the truck; a current position judgment unit which calculates current position information on the truck; means for calculating coasting start timing for achieving a target speed at a predetermined point in front of the current position based on the current position and speed of the truck and the target speed at the predetermined point by use of the databases and inputted information; and means for informing the driver of the coasting start timing according to the output of the calculation means (JP-2010-183687-A).